The announcement that Tim Scott has been appointed to fill South Carolina's vacant US Senate seat represents a remarkable turnaround both for Scott, a 47-year-old African American, and for the Republican party in America's Deep South.

For Scott it marks a rapid rise from his election to South Carolina's state legislature just four years ago. For the Republican party Scott will be its first African American senator for more than 30 years – and the first from the south since the post-Civil War era known as Reconstruction.

Scott, however, had already made history in 2010 when he was elected to represent South Carolina's first congressional district, becoming the first African American to be elected to Congress on the Republican party ticket by voters in the heartland of the old Confederacy.

Charleston, Scott's home and the centre of his congressional district, was also the birthplace of fighting in the Civil War, where monuments to Confederate soldiers abound. To add to the piquancy, in the Republican party primary Scott handily defeated Paul Thurmond, the son of former senator Strom Thurmond, a name synonymous with implacable opposition to the civil rights movement and who switched to the Republican party in protest of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act.

It is Strom Thurmond's former Senate seat that Scott will now be filling, thanks to the decision by South Carolina governor to appoint him. Given the state's rock-solid record of support for the GOP in recent years, barring disaster or misfortune, Scott is virtually guaranteed to win the special election that will be held in 2014.

Some in the Republican party have drawn parallels between Scott and Barack Obama; his rise has been nurtured in recent years by the Republican party's leadership, impressed by the carefully spoken and deeply conservative Charleston native, raised, like Obama, by a single mother. In his 2010 Republican primary Scott was supported by both the Tea party and more mainstream wings of the GOP, receiving backing from Sarah Palin and the then House whip Eric Cantor, as well as the nod from Jim DeMint, the man whose Senate seat he now takes up.

Scott had become a grassroots favourite long before, when as a member of the Charleston county council he led a move to display the Ten Commandments outside the council chambers. The council ultimately had to remove the document and settle legal action by the American Civil Liberties Union in 1998 after a court ruled the posting to be a violation of the separation of church and state. Scott was unrepentant: "I've always said and remain in this position: whatever it costs in the pursuit of this goal is worth it," he told the Associated Press.

Throughout his career, Scott has avoided much discussion about race, telling the Monitor during the 2010 election season: "South Carolinians want someone who represents values more than someone who represents their face, their complexion." But he is proud to note that he was the first black Republican elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives since Reconstruction.

Born in Charleston, Scott's parents divorced when he was seven, and he attributes his belief in conservative values to his mother, a nurse.

"By the time I entered high school, I was completely off track. My mother was working hard, trying to help me to realize that there was a brighter future, but I really couldn't see it," Scott wrote in 2010 at the launch of his congressional campaign.

Then, he says, he had the good fortune to meet the owner of a Chick-fil-A fast food franchise next door to the movie theatre where he worked. "He taught me that if you want to receive, you have to first give. Embedded in that conversation, I came to realize, was the concept that my mother was teaching me about individual responsibility."

From his mentor, Scott says, he was inspired to attend university and then start a thriving career as an insurance agent before taking his first steps into politics by running for the county council in 1995.

For all Scott's history-making, his politics remain firmly on the right of the Republican party, although he eschews the theatrics of some of his Tea party-backed colleagues. During the 2011 congressional battle over raising the federal debt ceiling, Scott remained one of the Republican hold-outs, rejecting the deal agreed by the House leadership.

In 2012 he was elected unopposed, winning 99% of the vote, with policies mirroring those of his party in the South: deep opposition to tax increases, Obamacare, unions, abortion and immigration reform. In 2010 Scott also declined to join the Congressional Black Caucus.

Thanking the Democratic-dominated caucus for its invitation, Scott said: "My campaign was never about race."